Crimson Peak (2015)

It’s no secret around these parts that Guillermo del Toro and I have had something of a parting of the ways when it comes to his most recent films. I’m a staunch admirer of his Hellboy films, and I think Pan’s Labyrinth is about as good as it gets when it comes to stylized magical realism. But Pacific Rim (at the risk of reopening that can of worms) left a bitter taste in my mouth. Fortunately, Crimson Peak is a bit of a return to form for del Toro, even though it suffers through a bumpy opening act or two to get there.

A modern woman in the fin de siècle mode, Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) falls for the dashing Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) while finishing her first novel – not a ghost story, but “a story with a ghost in it.” Though her stern banker father (Jim Beaver) disapproves, Sir Thomas courts Edith with everything he’s got. When the two marry and move to Allerdale Hall with Sir Thomas’s sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain), Edith discovers that there are skeletons in the Sharpe closet, ghosts in the ancestral home, and a bevy of other gothic tropes imperiling her very life.

It’s probably better to start with the bad news, because the effect Crimson Peak had on me did something very similar, tempering my exuberance for the film’s climax with a middling-at-best first hour. The problem with Crimson Peak is that it isn’t quite sure whether it wants to be a satire of the Gothic or a wholehearted revel through the genre. We can tell that del Toro is extremely well-read in the Gothic; the film carries with it a virtual checklist of tropes. (Moody castle? Check. Uncomfortably close siblings? Check. A murder/inheritance plot? Check.) But there is at the same time an accompanying sense that the performers are playing their parts a little too earnestly, working perceptibly too hard to convince the audience to play along with the fiction.

Take, for example, one of the worst things a film can do – a long and brutally on-the-nose expository monologue. Crimson Peak has such a one, in which Edith’s father chastises Sir Thomas for his effete and privileged upbringing, something that the coarse hands of a true American could never know. Now, this is a fine subtext, and it’s been played often enough that the audience could probably glean it from a well-crafted scene or two. But del Toro, for reasons that escape me, verbalizes these sentiments with painstaking precision, turning a subtle character motivation into a blunt instrument. This is to say nothing of the unsubtle parallels between Edith’s novel and the film we’re watching, both of which take great pains to tell us that “it’s not a ghost story, but a story with a ghost in it.” Yes, we know, but why does del Toro feel he needs an apologia-cum-apology to enter the genre?

The truth of the matter is that Crimson Peak is at its best when it surrenders wholeheartedly to the Gothic genre and turns into an unapologetic haunted house of horrors. del Toro’s ghosts, grotesquely gory skeletons, are genuinely terrifying, and the jump scares they elicit are first-rate fare for Halloween. What’s more, there’s enough left unspoken, communicated solely by the mood of the film, that Crimson Peak is a fine discussion-prompter once you’ve left the cinema. (And if it’s a dark and chilly night, so much the better!) I am more convinced by Edith’s efforts at detection as she pieces together the myriad mysteries of Allerdale Hall than I am by a comparable effort on the part of her physician (Charlie Hunnam), who extemporizes at length on the Sherlock Holmes books which sit in his office.

Cinema is a medium of showing, not telling, and del Toro proves in the back half of Crimson Peak that he’s a master at it. But it does very much feel like the first hour of Crimson Peak was made by the same man who made Pacific Rim, not Pan’s Labyrinth. Where the former was all sound and pixelated fury, signifying nothing but an orgiastic self-indulgence in digital trickery, the latter served as evidence of a sophisticated and sensitive cinematic eye. Crimson Peak is of two minds about its own identity, but if you can slog through the first half you’ll love the second.

Crimson Peak is rated R for “bloody violence, some sexual content and brief strong language.” The ghosts are skeletal, gruesomely bloody, or both, and there’s a fair amount of other graphic violence in store. There’s a somewhat intense sex scene in which only a man’s rear end is show (the woman keeps on her gown, which is somewhat ridiculous for the number of petticoats it contains). One F-word appears.

Top 10 Reasons Man of Steel Is Better Than Pacific Rim

I haven’t done a Top 10 list since Christmas, but I have to intervene at this moment in history.  As I write this, Pacific Rim (which, as you saw on Wednesday, really disappointed me) is tracking 15 points better on Rotten Tomatoes than Man of Steel (which, side by side with Iron Man 3, is a strong contender for “Best Summer Movie”), and I’ve read several reviews that agree with this consensus.  In fact, my first thought as the credits rolled on Pacific Rim was, “There are people in this world who liked that better than Man of Steel”?

My intention here isn’t to put Man of Steel on a pedestal or tear down Pacific Rim as the worst movie ever; I wouldn’t do either in any circumstance.  But I do think it bears further explanation why I preferred one over the other.  So without further ado, I give you:  “The Top 10 Reasons Man of Steel Is Better Than Pacific Rim”!

(Spoilers, definitely.)

Pacific Rim (2013)

If you’ve ever wanted to watch someone else play a video game, or if you’re one of those people who thought Transformers could have used a little more Godzilla, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim is exactly the movie for you.  As for me, I think I need a little more from a movie.

After the government decommissions the giant robot “Jaeger” program, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) seeks out former Jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) on the eve of the next big kaiju attack.  The kaiju, enormous monsters, have been rising from the ocean and attacking coastal cities for years, leaving humanity desperate to turn the tide.  As Becket is paired with skilled rookie Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), the kaiju attacks increase in frequency, with multiple monsters rising at once.

Readers know that I’m always a bit uncomfortable dismantling expensive passion projects from behind my keyboard, so I’ll say this about Pacific Rim – it’s entirely unpretentious, inoffensive, and governed by an obvious sense of the creators’ enthusiasm.  And as far as big-dumb-loud movies go, Pacific Rim is undoubtedly the most earnest and the most triumphant.  The trailers promise big machines punching big monsters, and you get that promise fulfilled to the nth degree; once you surrender to them, the action sequences are fun and imaginative – at least, within the parameters of “How could one CGI thing beat up another?”

So for a film that had to have been storyboarded by playing with action figures and making sh-boom noises, Pacific Rim is about as diverting as the trailers make it out to be.  It passes that lower bar of “summer popcorn flick” but in a summer where we’ve seen action films that grapple with important issues alongside stellar beat-’em-up sequences Pacific Rim pales by comparison.  Upon leaving the theater, the one adjective that dove to mind was “distanced.”  At no point did Pacific Rim convince me to care about what was going on.  Instead, it relies on the assumption that the audience already thinks that the premise is cool and, by extension, worthwhile.  Yes, the premise is mind-numbingly cool, but the film never convinces the audience to invest in the concept.

For one, you can forget about character development beyond Michael Bay levels of cliché and central casting stock.  It’s a shame that the characterization in the film is so poor, because it’s almost a waste of Idris Elba.  Elba, an actor so good he convinced fans of The Wire that he wasn’t British, does the best he can with the script, even when lines like “I’m a fixed point” draw attention to the script’s dearth of personality.  I don’t begrudge the film its five minutes of introductory exposition; I do, however, shake my head at characters who make Ellen Page’s “exposition queen” in Inception look like Molly Bloom.  Charlie Day’s only plot function is to shout science at us, and Kikuchi – who is, like Elba, doing the best she can – actually yells her character’s motivation, even though the script’s already given intelligent audiences that answer.  (Hint:  she’s an orphan.)  Why do we root for the main character?  Because he’s the main character, duh (and total first-act trauma, duh).  We deserve compelling protagonists, and Hunnam ain’t it.  (Sidebar:  was Garrett Hedlund busy?)

Then there are the tonal inconsistencies, which make me wonder if this isn’t actually a Michael Bay film signed by Guillermo del Toro in some weird Howard Roark/Peter Keating pact.  The introductory montage sets up a grim future for mankind against the kaiju, while the first action sequence plays like a tragic buddy picture.  Enter the exposition scientists (Day and Torchwood’s Burn Gorman), a pair comprised of a Justin Hammer knockoff and a grotesque caricature of a foppish snob; as my father remarked, “What movie do these two really belong in?”  Finally, I’ve said nothing about Ron Perlman’s black marketer Hannibal Chau, in part because he’s another tonal inconsistency (included, I’m sure, because of Perlman’s Hellboy history with del Toro); Perlman has compelling screen presence, and his character is just the right amount of bizarrely-out-of-place, but Pacific Rim becomes an entirely different movie whenever he’s on screen.

It’s not that I went into Pacific Rim looking for brilliant character studies and subtle storytelling; I went in looking for characters and plots – y’know, the things we expect from a movie.  What I got was a big, dumb, loud movie about pixels punching pixels.  If that’s your thing, Pacific Rim is right up your alley.  Me?  I’ll pick substance over style any day of the week.

(Go ahead, take to the comments and tell me I’m missing the point.  Just be sure to tell me what the point of the movie actually was.  That’s not a joke.  What is the point of this film?)

(Also, if you know the point of tofu, that’d be helpful, too.)

Pacific Rim is rated PG-13 for “sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence throughout, and brief language.”  Giant monsters fighting giant robots:  the former bleeds fluorescent blue flubber, while the latter get torn apart like papier-mâché.  A few civilians get eaten (bloodless), and an F-bomb gets dropped amid other milder profanities.  Oh, and my eardrums hurt.

It turns out that there are people in this world who liked Pacific Rim better than Man of Steel.  I can’t fathom such a poor life decision, but be sure to click back here on Friday for my list of “The Top 10 Reasons Why Man of Steel Is Better Than Pacific Rim”!

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

One thing's for sure: with Hellboy 2, Guillermo del Toro is assuredly getting comfortable with his wholly unique cinematic sense of sight. Visually, this superhero sequel is a mesmerizing tour de force replete with stylizations to make even Tim Burton blush at outperformance.

That, and how cool is a superhero whose catchphrase is "Aww, crap"?

Ron Perlman is the titular Hellboy, a devilishly good hero rescued from a Nazi ritual by American forces led by Professor Broom (a nice cameo from original cast member John Hurt). Now a member of the BPRD (a supernatural covert task force that for all intents and purposes "does not exist"), Hellboy joins fellow adventurers pyrokinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), aquatic Abe Sapien (Doug Jones, vocally and adequately replacing David Hyde Pierce, though the motions are still all Jones), and German ectoplasmic ghost Johann Kraus (the voice of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane). Hellboy's mission here is threefold - defeat the villainous Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), who's bent on destroying humankind; frustrate Tom Manning (George Bluth himself, Jeffrey Tambor), the boss of the BPRD; and find out what secret girlfriend Liz is keeping.

Where the first movie had all the earmarks of a Mike Mignola comic book - deep shadows, talking corpses, larger than life (literally) characters - Hellboy 2 couldn't be more Guillermo del Toro. I'm not sure how to encapsulate his particular "look," but you know it when you see it: lanky creatures with multiple eyes in all the wrong places, fascination with global mythologies, and an underreliance on CGI effects that have similarly earned Christopher Nolan a few heralds for his work. While superhero sequels often allow the writer to expand on a character without the burden of an origin story, this one allows del Toro to spread his visionary wings to create the artistic sight he's been bearing his whole career.

That's not to say that the movie is too dark or too "del Toro." Kudos to the team for finding a way to integrate humor in small doses to keep the tension of the film from crushing its audience; kudos also for the Baby Bear way of finding a "just right" amount of humor to inject without creating a self-mockery like Spider-Man 3. Perhaps the most classic example here, without giving too much away, is a moment right in the middle of the movie in which an intoxicated Hellboy and Abe sing along to Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You" over discussing girl troubles (Abe has been smitten by Nuada's twin sister Nuala). Too much of this would have destroyed the movie, but a few sprinklings here and there can only help.

Admittedly some of this movie smacks of a cry for a threequel - Hellboy's "destiny" for example seems fertile soil from which a threequel can grow, as does Liz's penultimate-frame delivery of the peace sign (not quite the intention, but I'd hate to spoil it). And I'm glad to hear that A) del Toro has a plan for a third movie involving the Universal Monster crew, and B) del Toro and Perlman are more than willing to keep doing Hellboy movies as long as they can.

If nothing else, though, this one is visually stunning in a way that comic book movies seldom are. Good thing the rest of the movie lives up to the eyeball assault. We'll have to wait a few years for the next one? Aww, crap.

Trailer Park: Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

This is actually the second trailer for Hellboy II: The Golden Army, but aside from being mostly similar, I think this trailer does more than the first trailer. Granted, I'm going to be seeing this movie regardless of its ad campaign, but I like how this trailer is distinct from others in that it doesn't have as much of the corny narration the first one did, and it introduces the movie by giving us a full scene before letting us know what the heck we're seeing.

Inspired casting in Ron Perlman as the big red devil Hellboy, and it's always good to see Jeffrey "George Bluth, Sr." Tambor getting work. This looks visually more complex than the first Hellboy movie, and I guess this is my only criticism of the trailer. This looks more like a Guillermo del Toro movie (in the style of Pan's Labyrinth) than a Hellboy movie. I know it's both, but I suppose I'm just spitting at a lack of visual continuity with the first one.

Oh, and despite how this trailer appears, Hellboy does use his "Aw, crap" catchphrase. That's just in the first trailer, though.